An Algerian woman apologised for her “horrible” actions Friday as she went on trial accused of raping and murdering a 12-year-old girl in Paris, in a case that sparked horror in France and was seized by the far right.
Dahbia Benkired, now aged 27, was detained after Lola Daviet went missing in the northeast of the French capital three years ago. The girl’s body was then found in a trunk in the lobby of the building where her father and mother worked as caretakers.
Conservative and far-right politicians seized on the case to call for better immigration law enforcement, after Benkired was found to have overstayed a student visa and failed to comply with a notice to leave France.
The victim’s mother has urged politicians to stop exploiting her daughter’s death.
On Friday, the girl’s family sat in court, wearing white T-shirts with a picture of a smiling child and the words: “You were the sun of our life, you will be the star of our nights.”
“I am waiting for justice to be done,” said Lola’s mother Delphine Daviet.
One woman in her fifties broke down in tears when the defendant entered the dock.
“I apologise to the whole family,” Benkired said in a monotone. “It’s horrible what I did. I regret it.”
She was found competent to stand trial.
– ‘Selling a kidney’ –
Although experts who evaluated Benkired’s mental health noted her “manipulative behaviour” they said she did not suffer from any “major psychiatric disorder”.
One of the victim’s brothers, Thibaut Daviet, urged the accused to tell “all the truth and nothing but the truth”.
Building residents saw Benkired in the lobby of the apartment block in the 19th district on October 14, 2022, carrying suitcases and a heavy trunk covered in a blanket, the investigation showed.
An hour and a half earlier, security footage showed Benkired approaching the girl as she returned from school, then leading her into the flat her sister occupied in the building.
Benkired raped and hit the schoolgirl with scissors and a box cutter, then bound her up in duct tape, including around her face, leading to her death by asphyxia.
She placed the body in a trunk and exited the building, pausing outside a cafe, where she told a client who suspected something strange in her luggage that she was “selling a kidney”, investigators said.
She then convinced a friend to drive her and the bags to his home, before taking a taxi with the trunk back to the building where her sister lived. She fled when she saw police deployed in the area, but was arrested the next day.
– ‘Twenty joints a day’ –
When images of the child’s mutilated body were shown during the hearing, Lola’s mother left the courtroom while Benkired remained impassive.
Benkired described growing up in a dysfunctional family, a childhood spent between Algeria and France, unloving aunts and a violent father.
She mentioned sexual abuse she allegedly suffered at the hands of a neighbour when she was 14, or “men who came to her aunts’ house” in Algeria.
She settled in France in 2013 but had no stable job or residence.
Encouraged by her drug dealer boyfriend, she turned to prostitution and smoked cannabis, she said.
“Twenty joints a day, it made me feel good,” she said.
An investigator said however that no evidence was found to support the claim that Benkired had been engaged in sex work.
The investigator recalled his astonishment at Benkired’s composure after her arrest.
He said she had been found to lie frequently, describing her as “very arrogant” and “aggressive.”
According to a personality assessment seen by AFP, the death of her mother in 2020 had been a “turning point”, with her life beginning to unravel.
She told investigators she had been angry with the girl’s mother, who had refused to give her an entry badge for the building, after her sister had given her a key to her flat.
The probe showed she had conducted searches online into witchcraft days before the murder.
Benkired, whose trial is to last until next Friday, faces a maximum sentence of life in jail.
Ahead of the trial, anti-immigration activists unfurled a banner in front of the courthouse reading “I don’t want to be next.”
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